(Hey everyone who is just waiting while mesk flies. I'm just gonna skip you. Unless you really want to be graced with a "And then you waited some more!" post)
Team Blue:
((That is exactly the reason. Anomaly ganked it is.))
Wait for a test ride and a response what route were going to be flying and whether we should put drones in front of the shuttle. Then board and take off. (Repeating the action.)
PS: Play Chito Grito as we fly. (don't have sound right now, hope this works. Yup, it works.)
The drones aren't very smart, but you can manage to tell a few of them to hover about 100 yards in front of the ship, just to give Mesk a bit of a heads up if shit is gonna get bad. Also you just get in the thing because there aren't no practice flights around here. Besides, mesk has flown this once before; he doesn't have to do rolls except for something new or extraordinary.
Let's-a go!
Edit: Remember to use the most up-to-date maps in order to steer well clear of any anomalies.
(By the way, where are we going?)
Take whatever route is decided by the team leaders or by consensus.
Which is apparently Sector 19.
You rise up and head out, flying toward sector 19 via the route the skirts the visual anomalies zone and the flatland. You stop the edge of sector 18.
"Uh guys...I'm not sure we should fly through here. There are like...black tower things?"
Sector 18 is an expanse of black rods, some only a few feet across others hundreds of meters wide, and all of them standing what must be over a mile tall. It presents a wall of black, like the trunks of a graphite forest, that blocks the way forward. The only way through seems either to fly over, around, or walk through. And from the great distance, off on the horizon, you can see that sector 19 looks quite odd as well, its a strange sort of indigo expanse, like an ocean but...well..purple.
"Well, I suppose you can drop off blue team first, or whatever. It doesn't matter who gets dropped off first, let's just get going."
Provide Mesk with a list of drop points for the teams and hop into the shuttle. Disembark when we arrive at our location.
Gonna be hard to do, I don't really know them.
Red team - Lukas
Lukas messages back to Anton:
"We're at the edge of the volcanic zone, about to collect samples. Join the party. It's a blast!"
He then turns to the rest of the team. "Okay men. This is it. This is where you can prove your sampling skills. Don't stop until the fat robot sings."
Randomly wander around (but beware of any dangers) and take samples of whatever seems intuitively interesting.
You wanna head into the hotzone or continue along it's border like before?
Team Red - Lukas
((I'll take the safe option, thank you. Let's continue along the border first.))
Red Team plays borderlands and hits a small hitch. They follow the edge of the Iron sea along it's west border and run across a rather strange geological anomaly. It's a waterfall of sorts, or an ironfall, in this case. A flow of pure, yellow hot molten metal into a massive chasm. Tiny islands of stone dot the edge of the molten falls like sandbanks in a stream and the flow throws off a continuous hell of sparks and embers as it rolls down into the abyss. Even stranger still, the chasm itself, even beyond the falls, is crackling with electricity; arcs of discharge that bridge the gap between the walls and race upward like the charge on a jacob's ladder.
"Huh. Well, thats a thing."
(@ Remalle: you need to take the team to sector 19. I choose that sector cause it seemed like that was the safest route. Going over the middle might be best, cause sector 3 is trouble, and sector 7 is uncertain danger. Might want to go over high.)
((Why not Sector 18? The flatlands don't reach there, the optical anomalies are off to the side, and it doesn't change the mission plan much. >_>))
((Sector 18 is ok too, but then he'll be flying dangerously close to the vision-distortion sector. And the pilot going blind in mid-air is rumored to be bad for your health. I guess you guys will see what route is the safest once you get nearer.))
(@ Remalle: you need to take the team to sector 19. I choose that sector cause it seemed like that was the safest route. Going over the middle might be best, cause sector 3 is trouble, and sector 7 is uncertain danger. Might want to go over high.)
((DO NOT GO HIGH! Don't you remember what happened to the drone? Except if by high, you mean really high, as in suborbital.))
((Pretty much. You could probably go out of orbit with that shuttle, so 'going high' means 'going as high as would be needed'. Remember he used that shuttle to get off-planet previous mission, so this could work too. But again, depends on how it looks once you're there.))
((By the way, I'll be away saturday, so if there is still indecision by then, you'll either have to wait or just go for it.))
Base team.
Try to think of a way of capturing one of the slug things using the stuff we currently have on hand.
Easiest thing you can think of is just getting simus in the battle suit or Lukas to just pick one up and drag it back. They're heavy but the suit and mr.giant robot are pretty damn strong. Worst comes to worst they could roll them or something.
Anton Chernozorov, Red Team technician, utterly alone in the garage.
Anton opens the general comms channel.
"Am I right in understanding that most of the experimentation team is already out? You people sure moved out quickly. This is Anton Chernozorov, I am taking the Dodo and a trailer of materials out north for experiments. If you have objections to that, please speak up soon."
Check on how many mapping drones we still have left. Put four of them, plus some basic materials like sheets of metal and long metal rods into the trailer. If a means to use it is readily available, put some fuel for the drones in there as well. Make sure to remember to take the container of bluerad shards along. Roll the MPV out of the garage, unhook the trailer, and drive a few circles and figure eights in front of the garage to get a feel for the controls. Wait for any word from teammates.
There are 127 left. Whoever stocked this place clearly knew about the HMRC and its habits of property destruction.
You load up the trailer up with the blue glass shards, the metal,rods, drones, fuel and various junk. That done, you unhitch it and drive around a bit. Seems easy, trivial even, compared to some of the stuff around here. It's basically a bike crossed with atv, nice and stable and quite easy to ride around on this flat ground with. Not exactly what you would call a powerhouse, but hey, it works.
Map
http://i.imgur.com/t5PTdVz.png